Highlights

1. Building exceptional teams and an exceptional company in three different time zones is the big challenge.
2. The big question is “how do we avoid getting so obsessed with the here and now, that we miss where our industry is going?”
3. A business built on impact, purpose and pride.

This is the fifth in a series of 15 episodes in which we asked Notion founders to answer four questions in the context of this new decade, describing their challenge in terms of going to the moon:-

1. What is your ambition for the coming decade?
2. What do you consider your biggest challenges?
3. What is success?
4. What is your greatest wish for the European tech ecosystem?

Oliver Meyrick, COO at Glofox. I’m a father of four and I enjoy growing things, whether families or businesses.

What is your biggest ambition for this coming decade?

My ambition is to build a business with purpose and impact. Glofox is a platform for fitness studios and our mission is two-fold: to help fitness entrepreneurs live their own dreams and build successful businesses and help people around the world achieve their fitness goals, helping battle obesity, improving mental health. Improving health and wellbeing on a global basis is something really worth doing.

The personal motivation is to build an exceptional company and an exceptional team.

What is the biggest challenge to achieving that vision?

Establishing teams in different time zones. We have offices now in Dublin, Sydney and LA and it’s hard to build the culture so these new offices aren’t seen as forgotten outposts, but are central to our success. That’s the biggest challenge: making sure everyone is aligned so we can recruit great people and build the company.

Ten years is a decent timescale but today we have customers to onboard, product to ship, people to hire. So the big question is “how do we keep an eye on where the puck is going, so as a business we don’t get so obsessed on the here and now that we miss where our industry is going?”

Keeping the long term vision in view is critical and that’s a big challenge.

What is your definition of success?

As a company, we talk about becoming the operating system for the fitness industry, and that would be an incredible achievement. Personally, it’s about legacy - creating a great business and a product to be proud of - creating jobs and creating an impact on our stakeholders - helping our customers and their end-users, building our team and seeing people get fulfilment from their work.

Our sweet spot is boutique fitness entrepreneurs and the folks that set up these companies are following their passion. We often ask them to come in to talk to us and their stories are incredible. They left their corporate job, remortgaged their home and were running their business with a handful of staff working 24x7 and they had to make a choice of the platform to choose and chose us. And if they are successful they will attribute a lot of that success to us. But then, for them, success means they then talk about their end-users and how they are changing their lives.

So we have thousands of customers, each changing the lives of hundreds or thousands of people. That’s impact; that’s purpose, that’s pride.

What is your biggest wish for the European tech ecosystem in the next decade?

My wish is that we talk about the European tech ecosystem as simply a part of the global tech ecosystem, thinking of Dublin, for example as the same as Boulder Colorado.

But don’t forget that being in Ireland where we started is a huge advantage. Our market is so small that from day one we had to think global. A big US competitor does not have to do that. So they don’t ability to serve a global franchise like we do because they don’t know how to localise. We built that capability from day one.

In many markets, there is an inattentive US-based market leader taking a very US-centric approach and missing the global opportunity. And that represents a fantastic opportunity for European tech founders.

This podcast series was recorded at our annual Founder Retreat in October 2019.